


Out of My Natural Shape

by sexonastick



Category: Fingersmith - Sarah Waters
Genre: Canon Gay Relationship, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-25
Updated: 2012-08-25
Packaged: 2017-11-12 20:22:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/495290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sexonastick/pseuds/sexonastick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just a small character study in Sue's point of view set after the end of the novel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Out of My Natural Shape

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written July 21st, 2008.

There were times I had together with Maud that seemed clearer than any other moments in my life. It wasn't always or even often, but tiny seconds would appear with a shine to them like something polished and put up for sale. Like memories might be made out to be a bit of poke so clean and clear like crystal you'd have to smash it if the blues came round looking because the only things in life that can be made so rare or precious to the eye are the ones you've got to steal for yourself. At least the ones that might have the fingerprints from folks like me on them, or that's how I always used to think.

Not only that, these seconds I spent with her were sharp as well, like pricks of needles on your skin. Except unlike normal jabs, these cut across my brain instead, saying, _here now, this is different_. I thought to myself, _everything is different now_ , like a warning from my own self to pay attention, but you have to understand I didn't mean it like most would. How could I?

My life up until that point had only certain ways of going. There was only forwards or backwards, with paths branching off for moving briefly side to side, but always you'd come back to where you'd been. Before Briar I'd never left London, of course. Where was there to go? People leave and go _to_ London, they don't go from it.

I wasn't born for the country, even if I know now that ain't exactly what's true. I can't stand the way the night gets so dark and quiet it's like disappearing even when you're awake. The world can swallow you up in the country and no one might be there to hear of it.

It was only worse when I came back to find everything fallen apart and her standing at the center. 

But she wasn't standing anymore. I'd found her in the library, and there we spent the night. She read to me about things I never could have imagined said in her voice. Sometimes she spoke slowly, saying _'my lips to catch your breath'_ though other times her voice went low and those are when my mind might blank and she had to start over. It was like staring at a wall so long your eyes make it seem to move. That was what I knew of her. First it was in one place, and then across the room. 

She said _'swelling'_ and also _'rising, thrusting,'_ and I tried not to imagine Gentleman, or even worse her uncle -- _my_ uncle, and oh how my skin still crawls at times to think of it in that way -- how they might sit and listen to her saying such words to them. For them. Now I knew what sort of books she read, now I knew the words her voice would carry in this room, and knowing most of all how they'd had it to themselves before me. 

I didn't understand the feeling too clearly at the time, but this was jealousy. It was a new kind from any I'd felt before, not like wanting for something you might see someone wear or in a window of a shop but a real hard and sharp ache in the gut that felt like swallowing a stone. 

When the morning sun came in and struck the lines along Maud's face, I felt the ache again, or a sharpness much like it. But it was something not the same this time. This wasn't for the want of having after all. This was having, and now I knew that it could make a body ache as well.

I couldn't help myself, I touched her. She stirred and right away I felt sorry for it. She was so beautiful and so at peace, I should have left her sleeping. I would have watched her doing only that, I think, and felt happier than I had done in weeks. I was sick before, but here was a sickness too. Her eyes opened the rest of the way to a smile and something twisted inside me.

But then her eyes flew wider still, opened the rest of the way and she sat up with a start. She must have thought, I think, of Mr. Lilly still alive and maybe even in this very room with her, watching as she slept. It made me shudder to wonder at how many times she may have woken here before to that same vision -- a nightmare, to be sure. I took her hand, ink-stained but still small like I remembered, and brought it to my lips to warm against my breath.

Everything had changed, much more than I could have ever imagined the world could be possible of changing.

We stayed until the money came -- _our_ money, I said, though still she would say 'no, Sue, yours' -- and then at last we left the house together. I took her away from that horrible place where she had been so many years a prisoner. We boarded up the rooms and locked the gate and thought ourselves free to never come back.

I talk as though I lifted Maud up in my arms or carried her across my back. I would have liked to have done. Instead we packed our things real careful like and left the proper way. That is, Mr. Inker with his carriage to take us to the station and then we rode the train on to London, with her even carrying the larger of our bags herself as it would only thump my leg as I tried to walk faster, and every time she gasped. 

'Sue, careful!' she said, and slipped it from my fingers in exchange for one with only clothes and no books that might be damaged. The pages of books were still unexplored territory to me, though she explained how they must be looked after and I felt I understood. I knew plenty about the care and maintenance of things.

So I say, 'sorry, miss' in a way that had become habit and would be so for even some time after that, so unaccustomed was I to use of her name anywhere but in my own head. Even then, too much time with her as 'Maud' rather than 'miss' was spent in fantasies of my hands round her throat in a way none too gentle. 

Though still it is true, and I'm shamed to admit, that even when I hated her I loved her. In wishing her dead, I still wanted her near and thoughts of my hand on her pulse would always lead then to how soft her skin and mouth is.

Those were the sharp times, the thoughts that were black around their edges like great holes to fall and disappear in, and the place which brought them I still have not explained to her in full. I think she understands something of it, though, from how she stands close to me on the street when strangers act in a weird sort of way. She sees the way I grow nervous. A woman humming a forlorn tune to herself -- or even worse, to someone invisible who she speaks with as if they're really there -- or the way my jaw might start to stiffen at the sight of a wash tub. With these things she is watchful, though she says nothing.

Maud only has to hold my hand until it passes, and this she knows too. She knows parts of me like I am paper under her hand. She smoothes me down to tell a story. Her words travel over my skin. So too does her mouth, but I'm getting ahead.

Before she was Maud to me, she was my mistress. I think at times she may still be. My thoughts are always of her and most especially of her comfort. You can't think I do it for charity's sake. I'm selfish in my service to her. Whenever something can be done to please her I must do it, not for any sense of goodness I have in me but because it pleases me so to make her happy. I am selfish in my love and how I cannot seem to stop it. I would smother her mouth with kisses for just one smile and would do it still though she might gasp.

There are times to this day I call her 'miss' when she lies on top of me in bed. I think to myself that it thrills her, though she won't care to admit it. She just smiles and lays her weight more firmly against me so that I am pinned underneath. At times she says, 'Oh miss, am I?' 

I only lick my lips and fall to trembling, which is always the way with her mouth so close it's as if the words mix straight into my skin. She knows this I think, and it's still this way with her though we've done this together more times than I could ever count or recite. 

Though she says she writes with me for inspiration, she could never put it all to paper. I keep her hands occupied well enough for many hours after all, and there are only so many available to her through the day.


End file.
